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01 Aug 2012, 01:21

Hi expert, need you advice regarding preparation strategy

BASICS

- One year trying to beat GMAT- Not native speaker, East Europe- Best result in REAL GMAT M48, V34 (660) May 2012- Last exam was few weeks ago M45, V28 (610) (but i guess such poor result because of terrible head ache. I did not canceled the score, because i want to see the IR score. Hope such poor result will not harm me)

- RC (terrible timing, 4 min for reading of passage and the first question, average 3 min per question, average 1 mistake per passage)- SC (Found real exam confusing with much different question type than those i solved in questions banks, and this is puzzling me. In such tests as MGMAT or Grockit only 1-3 mistakes per exam, but i guess in real exam there are more mistakes. Also in real exam spend much more time for question)- CR (In general ok, all mistakes mainly because of lost concentration, sometimes spend more than 4 min for hard question)- Timing in real exam not so good. Enough time only for 32-33 question and rest is random click

NEXT EXAMS30 AUG30 SEPTTARGET SCORE 38

PREPARATION STRATEGY???

- How to prepare to new SC questions? Where there are no 2/3 split, different wording of answer choices and extra emphasis on meaning? question banks? Theory?- Timing strategy. Improving timing (less time, and thus more mistakes, before 32 question but no randdom click after 33). Does it helps?- RC? Good book or other material? How to improve timing?- Tutoring? Does it useful on this stage? if yes advice me few?- What are others possible areas of improvement? - Is it realistic to improve score from 34 to 38 in one month? What is average number of mistakes to get 37-38 score? What can be a used as realistic benchmarking, besides GMAT prep, there i have 44 score)

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- How to prepare to new SC questions? Where there are no 2/3 split, different wording of answer choices and extra emphasis on meaning? question banks? Theory?Check out this article: http://www.veritasprep.com/blog/2012/05 ... furiously/It discusses the importance of meaning based questions in SC.

- Timing strategy. Improving timing (less time, and thus more mistakes, before 32 question but no randdom click after 33). Does it helps?For timing strategies, check: http://www.veritasprep.com/blog/2010/10 ... for-field/It discusses why skipping an occasional question is better than guessing on 5 questions at the end.

- RC? Good book or other material? How to improve timing?Veritas has a great RC book with GMAT-like practice passages from various topics. Also, it discusses strategies you can use to handle the questions and minimize the time spent.

- Tutoring? Does it useful on this stage? if yes advice me few?I don't think you need anything other than practice for Quant. You might want to take a package of a few hrs with a tutor for Verbal to go through your weak areas. Thereafter, it will be all about practice.

- What are others possible areas of improvement? - Is it realistic to improve score from 34 to 38 in one month? What is average number of mistakes to get 37-38 score? What can be a used as realistic benchmarking, besides GMAT prep, there i have 44 score)

It is. Number of mistakes is just one input. The level of questions answered correctly/incorrectly is a big factor too. The most realistic benchmark is the GMAT prep test. Unfortunately, there aren't many GMAT prep tests available.

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General Strategy: I would recommend that you review the sources that you have been practicing. In addition, you purchase the additional question bank from GMAC ($25). You can make this purchase from the GMATPrep software. I do believe that you have the right fundamentals and that your scoring is impacted more by your headache than by your ability.

Timing and other Strategies: Attend this Strategy Session. The next session is this weekend. In this session we talk about timing strategies, define metrics that you should track both during and after the mocks.

Specific Sections:

Reading Comprehension: Are you following the reading strategies as outlined in the e-GMAT course and have you practiced all the passages from there. I believe that there is a problem with comprehension. Make sure that you have practiced reading the e-GMAT passages and OG questions using the reading strategies.

Sentence Correction: We have over 100 meaning based questions. Have you completed the UGE and the meaning based "in depth" series. Again, have you been following eGMAT's 3 step process.

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01 Aug 2012, 23:49

VeritasPrepKarishma wrote:

Slywork wrote:

PREPARATION STRATEGY???

- How to prepare to new SC questions? Where there are no 2/3 split, different wording of answer choices and extra emphasis on meaning? question banks? Theory?Check out this article: http://www.veritasprep.com/blog/2012/05 ... furiously/It discusses the importance of meaning based questions in SC.

- Timing strategy. Improving timing (less time, and thus more mistakes, before 32 question but no randdom click after 33). Does it helps?For timing strategies, check: http://www.veritasprep.com/blog/2010/10 ... for-field/It discusses why skipping an occasional question is better than guessing on 5 questions at the end.

- RC? Good book or other material? How to improve timing?Veritas has a great RC book with GMAT-like practice passages from various topics. Also, it discusses strategies you can use to handle the questions and minimize the time spent.

- Tutoring? Does it useful on this stage? if yes advice me few?I don't think you need anything other than practice for Quant. You might want to take a package of a few hrs with a tutor for Verbal to go through your weak areas. Thereafter, it will be all about practice.

- What are others possible areas of improvement? - Is it realistic to improve score from 34 to 38 in one month? What is average number of mistakes to get 37-38 score? What can be a used as realistic benchmarking, besides GMAT prep, there i have 44 score)

It is. Number of mistakes is just one input. The level of questions answered correctly/incorrectly is a big factor too. The most realistic benchmark is the GMAT prep test. Unfortunately, there aren't many GMAT prep tests available.

Thanks a lot of detailed answers!!!!!!!!

Thanks for advice.1. Regarding Meaning. The main problem for me is not the meaning itself but rather structure of answer choices which is in real exam differs from those in question banks. Answer choices in Real exam worded completely different from the original A-Choice. And it makes me to spend a lot of time, especially when i trained to mechanical POE - just spotting gramatical errors. I guess GMAC wants to fight such mechanical approach, but new type of question definitely can be solved with the speed of old ones (bellow 1 min). To deal with this you need good and relevant question bank, but i still have not found it. Only Brutal SC 100 looks like real exam questions, all others are too far away from reality.

2. Timing. Thanks, interesting strategy. One question - if i found hard passage, for an example biology which I hate, what is better to do? Skip the whole passage and save time or try to deal with it? There is a penalty for few errors in the row from one side, but form the other - RC is most time consuming, skiping other type of question will not give enough saved time.

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02 Aug 2012, 00:57

egmat wrote:

Dear Slywork,

General Strategy: I would recommend that you review the sources that you have been practicing. In addition, you purchase the additional question bank from GMAC ($25). You can make this purchase from the GMATPrep software. I do believe that you have the right fundamentals and that your scoring is impacted more by your headache than by your ability.

Timing and other Strategies: Attend this Strategy Session. The next session is this weekend. In this session we talk about timing strategies, define metrics that you should track both during and after the mocks.

Specific Sections:

Reading Comprehension: Are you following the reading strategies as outlined in the e-GMAT course and have you practiced all the passages from there. I believe that there is a problem with comprehension. Make sure that you have practiced reading the e-GMAT passages and OG questions using the reading strategies.

Sentence Correction: We have over 100 meaning based questions. Have you completed the UGE and the meaning based "in depth" series. Again, have you been following eGMAT's 3 step process.

A 4 point improvement is very much possible.

Regards,

Rajat Sadana

1. General strategy. I have already purchased and solve all the question for Q pack 1, it is too easy and don't look like real exam question. That disappointed me, cause i hoped that this is fresh stuff from GMAC is should be as close to real exam as possible, but SC questions there are totally obsolete. The real question is different - answer choice always differently worded from original A-choice, meaning emphasis 2-3 grammatically correct answer with different meaning.

But few negative comments abou E-Gmat- All topics are too narrow and omit crucial information, thus I needed extensive support form some grammar book for each topic.- Practice files are too theoretical, the link with material is strong, but for practicing your need more real questions- Meaning part is the best among all i have ever seen, but this is definitely not enough. You approach of 5 way how GMAC can distort meaning is good, but it looks like in the real exam GMAC use much more than 5 ways. You strategy good for solving meaning question form SC_1000 or OG but to narrow for real exam.

But in real exam what i have noticed - Different wording of all answer choices - there is no more 2-3 split - no more easy to spot errors like between-among, like-as, subject-verb agreements that make you POE fast - To much playing with preposition, especially in short questions - Dirty tricks to distract your attention form real mistake - up 2-3 grammatically correct version all with different meaning - unclear situations - how to understand what to do - change ridicules, on your opinion, original meaning or stick to original meaning

RCJust have finished the theory part in E-gmat. Starting Application files. Will try to improve my timing using your strategy.

Yes, Grockit is good, but its question bank is based on reworded OG or other resources, after a while you can recall questions and this distort results.But in general Grockit is good resource, especially with its innovative statistics which marks your weak and strong areas.

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2. Timing. Thanks, interesting strategy. One question - if i found hard passage, for an example biology which I hate, what is better to do? Skip the whole passage and save time or try to deal with it? There is a penalty for few errors in the row from one side, but form the other - RC is most time consuming, skiping other type of question will not give enough saved time.

Thanks.

In my opinion, do not skip questions because you dislike the area of study. Skip only when you find those particular questions hard. It is possible that the biology passage you get is really easy and your 4 incorrect answers put you on a back foot. It might take you a long time to recover. If you know that you dislike biology passages, make extra efforts right now to work through lots of such passages. Read up the bio sections of science journals. Make every effort to cover all your bases before the test. The test will possibly throw some surprises to drag you down. Don't intentionally plan to drag yourself down too.
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